The Minister of Nepean-Carleton

Chloe Fèdio, The Ottawa Citizen10.27.2012

Poilievre works the crowd at the Richmond Fair parade in September. ‘Each time you live through a controversy you strengthen,’ he says. ‘I read a lot of history. It has taught me that any politician has to overcome difficult periods to achieve their goals.’Pat McGrath
/ Ottawa Citizen

The Boys from Barrhaven: Pierre Poilievre and John Baird on Parliament Hill in 2006. ‘He has an incredible political gut,’ says Poilievre of his older mentor. ‘The ability to look at ... a complex controversy, distil all the information down to what’s important and make a fast judgment. And that was important to me as a young candidate ... ’CHRIS MIKULA
/ The Ottawa Citizen

2004 file photo: Tory candidate Pierre Poilievre for Nepean-Carleton canvasing in old Barhaven on Stradwick Ave — walking with him is vol asst. John Light.Pat McGrath
/ The Ottawa Citizen

:Poilievre kisses Jenni Bryne, his girlfriend at the time, after his upset victory over Liberal David Pratt in the 2004 election.Wayne Cuddington
/ The Ottawa Citizen

Poilievre, right, with fellow Reform party youth delegate Stephen Murphy at the United Alternative Convention in Ottawa in 2000.Wayne Cuddington
/ The Ottawa Citizen

Poilievre works the crowd at the Richmond Fair parade in September. ‘Each time you live through a controversy you strengthen,’ he says. ‘I read a lot of history. It has taught me that any politician has to overcome difficult periods to achieve their goals.’Pat McGrath
/ Ottawa Citizen

Pierre Poilievre with Preston Manning

Poilievre consoles David Pratt, the Nepean-Carleton Liberal MP and defence minister, whom he defeated in his first attempt at elected politics in 2004.

On a crisp fall Saturday afternoon, Pierre Poilievre stops in at a garage sale at Legion Branch 314 in Manotick and immediately becomes the butt of a joke.

It’s been a few weeks since the scrappy Conservative MP from Nepean-Carleton crashed his soapbox car into a metal shed outside the building, but the legionnaires are still having a good laugh. Poilievre takes the ribbing in stride, conceding that he veered out of control when he couldn’t stop the car near the base of the hill. But he is sure to remind everyone that he won the race.

That doesn’t stop legion member Monique Lanouette, though.

“He is now known at the legion as the Conservative who turned left,” she laughs.

That sharp left turn might well have been a first for Poilievre, whose right-leaning Conservative allegiance took root when he was a teenager growing up in Preston Manning’s Calgary Southwest riding, a Tory bastion now held by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Poilievre was a member of the Reform Party before he was old enough to vote. He supported the movement to unite the right to end the small-c conservative vote splitting that was making it easier for the Liberals to hang on to power.

It was a road that brought him to Ottawa in 2002, where less than two years later he knocked off Liberal heavyweight David Pratt, the sitting defence minister of the day, to become the youngest MP in the House of Commons.

It didn’t take him long to make his mark as a hyper-partisan politician always ready with Tory talking points to deflect opposition barbs with well-rehearsed, often chippy Tory talking points.

Now in his fourth term, and still only 33, Poilievre has evolved into an influential parliamentary secretary who is popular within his own ranks — though often criticized by the rest — and, depending on who you talk to, the future of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Pierre Poilievre is a man of strong opinions. In his teens, he started writing letters to the Calgary Herald about economic policy. In university, he was a finalist in an essay contest called “If I were Prime Minister” based on his ideas about personal income tax.

But if you ask, he’ll say his mother — both of his parents are retired school teachers — is “probably the most opinionated member of the family, even more than me.”

Like her son, Marlene Poilievre became involved in politics early. Before she moved to Calgary in the late 1970s, she campaigned for the Progressive Conservatives in Saskatchewan — she’s kept the photographic evidence of the time she met John Diefenbaker.

Pierre, the oldest of her two sons, was a competitive diver, and later an amateur wrestler and hockey player, before he expressed an interest to join her at a board meeting for a provincial PC riding association. She says he was about 14.

“Whatever he did, he wanted to be an achiever and go right to the top,” she says from Calgary, where she still lives.

Pierre has another way of looking at it: “My dreams of NHL glory were never fulfilled so I had to settle for politics instead,” he says, with a laugh.

He got his first paid political job the summer before Grade 12, when he earned $600 a month working for then-Reform MP Art Hanger. That was just the start. His mother rattles off the names of other Reform-turned-Canadian Alliance-turned-Conservative Alberta MPs — Jason Kenney, Rob Anders, Rahim Jaffer — whose campaigns her son worked on over the next few years.

She watched as her son, then an international relations student at the University of Calgary, led the successful movement to draft Stockwell Day to lead the new Canadian Alliance in 2000.

At 23, he sat down with his mother for some advice. He had job offers in Calgary but also an intriguing chance to work in Ottawa as an assistant to Day, who by then had been replaced by Harper as party leader.

“I said, ‘You better go there and get this out of your system. After the next election, come back here,’” she recalls telling him in 2002. “Well, that just didn’t happen.”

After the merger of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives under the new Conservative Party banner, Poilievre, won the nomination for Nepean-Carleton, a geographically wide suburban-rural riding in west Ottawa held by David Pratt.

When the election was called in May 2004, young Poilievre campaigned to win but told his parents it was a long shot.

“I told them that I expected to lose because I didn’t want them to be disappointed if I did,” he recalls. “I thought I had a good chance of winning but I knew there was an equally good chance that I wouldn’t.”

During the previous election in 2000, Pratt won with 41.2 per cent of the vote, while the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative attracted a combined 53.4 per cent of the ballots.

Poilievre’s bid was helped by John Baird, then a popular Tory MPP whose riding covered a lot of the same territory. Baird had also been just 25 when he was first elected to Queen’s Park in 1995, and provided a perfect model of how a young politician could be successful.

“He has an incredible political gut,” Poilievre says of Baird. “The ability to look at a controversy, a complex controversy, distil all the information down to what’s important and make a fast judgment. And that was important to me as a young candidate because I needed a lot of advice and he was always there to provide it.”

When the results rolled in on June 28, 2004, Poilievre had earned 45.7 per cent of the vote compared to Pratt’s 40.1 per cent. He had become the youngest MP in Parliament.

From behind his orange-tinted glasses, New Democrat MP Pat Martin says Poilievre stood out even as a young rookie politician.

“It was pretty evident he was a keener right from Day 1 — and somebody to watch,” Martin says. “He was undeniably talented and very well dressed.”

While Martin disagrees “profoundly” with Poilievre on most issues, he agrees with him when it comes to suits. The two political adversaries have traded business cards on tailors.

“He was happy one time to find some suit guy who comes to town once a year with a bunch of Hong Kong suits and measures you up,” Martin says. “Then you get the suit later in the mail.”

Poilievre, who pronounces his name paw-li-ver, admits he had help picking his clothes early in his political career. He turned 25 during his first election campaign and was surprised when some of his volunteers threw him a party at his Manotick office — complete with some gifts that he hadn’t thought he needed.

“A bunch of the ladies on the campaign actually bought me some clothes because they thought I was very badly dressed,” he recalls. “I was out of university and I hadn’t really — I hadn’t mastered my wardrobe at all.”

Before Poilievre was elected, he’d had only a handful of jobs. As a teenager, he worked in corporate collections at Telus, calling businesses that hadn’t paid their bills and helping them develop payment plans. He had an internship at Magna International and another in Kenney’s constituency office. He made a brief foray into journalism, writing the Who’s Suing Whom column for Alberta Report, a now-defunct conservative weekly magazine.

“I used to go to the courthouse and read the statements of claim. I had to find something interesting to put in this little box on one page. They were just little paragraphs. That was my only job,” he says. “It was really human interest more than legal questions.”

In his early 20s, around the same time he was working for Day, Poilievre co-founded a polling and consulting firm called 3D Contact Inc. with Jonathan Denis, now Alberta’s justice minister and solicitor general. The pair decided that their market research and campaign management service would be “exclusively” for those who shared their political views, Denis says.

“We saw a bit of a niche in the market ... that we could sell our company on the fact we believed in the cause. We were only working for ‘small c’ conservative candidates.”

Denis says Poilievre was more than a business partner — he was the best kind of friend.

“He’s not the type of person who will tell you what you want to hear to your face. He’s someone who will tell you what he really believes. I think that shows a lot of conviction for someone in public office,” Denis says.

But Poilievre’s sometimes brash and off-the-cuff remarks have embroiled him in a number of controversies in his eight years as an MP.

On more than one occasion, there have even been questions about whether he’s fit for public office.

He dropped an f-bomb during a Commons committee meeting, was caught making rude gestures in the House and was slammed for using the controversial term “tar baby.” He was also accused of thinking he was above the law when he drove through an RCMP security checkpoint on Parliament Hill rather than wait for clearance.

And, perhaps most infamously, on the same day Harper made a historic apology to aboriginals on behalf of the government for residential schools, Poilievre criticized the work ethic of native people on a radio program.

“I decided not to be frustrated by it because it toughens people just a little bit more,” he says. “Each time you live through a controversy you strengthen. I read a lot of history. It has taught me that any politician has to overcome difficult periods in order to achieve their goals.

“Winston Churchill was one of the most unpopular politicians in the late ’30s and by the mid-’40s he was considered one the greatest statesmen, possibly of all time.”

He pauses and then laughs.

“I’m not comparing myself. I’m just saying that controversies come and go, but the important thing is sticking to your principles and persevering through those controversies,” he says.

It’s when he’s talking about history that Poilievre really loosens up. He describes the “beautifully organized, meticulous” Churchill library that Ron Cohen built over his attached garage in Manotick.

Ask Cohen, the head of the Churchill Society in Ottawa, the most obscure detail about the legendary wartime British prime minister and the sourced answer will come in under five minutes, says a clearly impressed Poilievre.

Cohen, 68, wrote a three-volume, 2,200-page definitive bibliography of Churchill’s works and has more than 6,000 Churchill pieces in his library, including books, pamphlets, recordings and newspaper articles dating back to 1899.

Cohen recalls the afternoon in January when Poilievre stopped in for a short visit and ended up staying for hours. Poilievre, he says, is a “good bit younger yet very conversant” about Churchill — and beyond.

“I was very impressed with Pierre’s knowledge — not only of Churchill but British politics and wartime issues,” Cohen says. “I expected the interest but there was definitely an in-depth knowledge of the subject.”

Delving into the history of particular places inspired backpacking trips during Poilievre’s undergraduate years. He read up on Ancient Rome and Paris before he travelled through Italy and France, staying in “the worst hostels imaginable.” He later read up on Ancient Egypt before making a trip to Mount Sinai.

Poilievre is animated when he describes those adventures, but when asked how he’d like to spend his next vacation he pauses to reflect.

“I love to hike in the Rocky Mountains. They are magnificent in every way,” he says. “Their enormity reminds us of how small our problems are because they’re inhospitable to commercial and industrial life. They’re far away from any of the normal troubles — the day-to-day concerns that we live out in modern society. It’s just a nice place to go and be away. I go with a couple of best friends from high school and just enjoy myself.”

The response could be construed as crafted — delivered as though on a podium. Indeed, Poilievre has been criticized often for sticking too close to talking points — whether it’s specific questions from the opposition in the House or by-partisan discussions of the issue of the day on a current affairs program. The Twitterverse dubbed him “Mr. Non-Answer” earlier this month for his political spin during Question Period.

NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice called Poilievre a “clown” in the House for answering questions with questions, while another New Democrat, Charlie Angus, dubbed him “the member for dodging, ducking and making things up.”

Though Baird, now minister of foreign affairs, concedes that some opposition members don’t like Poilievre, he says his younger colleague’s sense of humour is a saving grace.

“We have it tough — this is a tough job, it can be stressful. Pierre takes his job seriously, his responsibilities seriously, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously. And I respect that,” Baird says.

New Democrat Martin, who faced criticism himself for unleashing a profane tirade on Twitter, says Poilievre has the advantage of youth to reinvent himself.

“He was as scrappy as anybody in opposition,” Martin says. “Now in the majority government, he’s adopted more statesmanlike, less harried public persona, which is appropriate. He doesn’t have to light his hair on fire to get attention and he doesn’t have to be as, perhaps, defensive on issues when they have a majority.”

Martin praised Poilievre for being “honourable and trustworthy” when the two collaborated on the Federal Accountability Act in 2006.

“We disagree on almost everything, but he’s true to his word and nothing I’ve ever seen would lead me to believe otherwise,” Martin says. “He makes me mad quite often and I find him infuriating. But he’s very good at what he does and I think his enthusiasm comes from an honest place.”

Baird’s influence on Poilievre is obvious, Martin says. Not only did they represent the same constituents, more or less, for 18 months — Baird as MPP and Poilievre as MP — Poilievre later served as parliamentary secretary to Baird when he was Treasury Board president.

“He’s been groomed and mentored in the dark arts by the master: Mr. Baird. ... I think he’s benefited from working so closely with such a competent senior minister,” Martin says. “The main concern now would be not letting himself get arrogant. He’s always been cocky but I think he’s also avoided arrogance. I hope he maintains that.”

Baird agrees that Poilievre has “grown as a Parliamentarian,” but chalks it up to the experience that come with working long hours.

“He works like a dog. He will literally email me about issues that we should be pushing at 11:30 at night or on a weekend. I have huge respect for his work ethic,” Baird says.

Young and unmarried — though formerly romantically linked to Jenni Byrne, director of political operations for the Conservatives — Poilievre will tell you he’s not always on the job and he does actually turn his off BlackBerry.

“I find that I can’t sleep otherwise,” he says.

And when he needs a waking break, you’ll probably find him at the gym — he does cross-training three times a week — or playing chess, usually on the Internet, although he keeps a board in his office.

“It’s fully usable but when I get a craving to play I never have anyone sitting beside me,” Poilievre says. “If you go online, there’s thousands of people. It takes my mind entirely out of the real world and puts it in a different place.”

With a bag full of lollipops in a blue reusable Pierre Poilievre MP bag, the man himself is marching down McBean Street during the fall parade in Richmond, throwing out handfuls of candy to the crowds lining the street.

When a woman, an obvious Tory supporter, complains loudly about her Liberal-red lollipop, Poilievre is ready with his partisan response.

“Blue is always better than red,” he says as he hands her a lollipop of a less offensive colour.

“Do you want the red one back?” she asks.

“Not really,” is his honest reply. “But I’ll take it anyway.”

A dozen volunteers march with him — two in the front hold a banner with his image while another drives an antique Buick Riviera convertible with blue balloons and “Re-elect Pierre Poilievre” signs poking out the back.

Karen Koba is part of the group handing out candies.

“Don’t we love our Pierre? Woohoo!” she shouts.

Koba says she was “taken” by Poilievre during his first election campaign. Even though she’s moved out of his riding to Stittsville, she still volunteers for him.

“He is the best,” Koba says, then lowers her parade voice to a near-whisper. “I say he’s going to be prime minister one day. I do.”

The prophecy may be a bit premature. Eight years in, Poilievre is not yet a minister in one of the largest cabinets of all time.

But Baird notes that Poilievre has represented tough portfolios as a parliamentary secretary for more than six years — including two years for Harper and to the minister of intergovernmental affairs. That’s good training. He is currently the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities and for the Federal Economic Development Agency for southern Ontario.

Poilievre also helped draft the Conservative platform for the 2011 election.

“Honestly, the prime minister has a tremendous amount of trust and respect for him,” Baird says. “He is well respected within our team.”

For now, though, Poilievre will have to settle for being the Minister of Nepean-Carleton — a title he used himself on the night of his 2008 election victory.

The core of his philosophy is straightforward: to “constantly engage the community and always show up.”

He is there for the soapbox race that dented the shed and he returned a few weeks later to rebuild it with members of the legion. He participates in about 10 parades a year. And he believes in the power of canvassing.

Poilievre credits his constituents for bringing policy ideas to him, including the Fairness for Military Families Act.

Maj. Jim Duquette was expecting the babysitter for a rare date night with his wife Anne when the door-knocking Poilievre showed up on his doorstep in Osgoode.

He told the MP about the frustration of finding out that while convicted criminals could defer employment insurance benefits for parental leave, on-duty members of the Canadian Forces could not.

Duquette was deployed to the Golan Heights in Israeli-occupied Syria four days after his first son Jacob was born by emergency C-section. He applied for parental leave when he returned 54 weeks later, but had missed the deadline by two weeks.

“Within the forces, a lot people were saying, ‘We get it. We understand it. It isn’t right but it’s the law. We can’t change that.’ It just didn’t seem right,” he says. “Luckily, Pierre was there to listen.”

After some back-and-forth with Poilievre’s office, Duquette appeared before a standing committee via video link from Afghanistan. The act came into effect in 2010. It was too late for him, but Duquette says the change in rules benefits up to 60 military families a year.

The advantage of being an MP whose riding is in the capital is the easy access to your constituents. For Poilievre, the cozy French Café located in a Manotick strip mall doubles as a coffee shop and a place to say hello to voters.

But owner Grace Agostinho doesn’t like to talk shop with Poilievre.

“I don’t see him as a politician. He’s a friend. French Café is like a break from everything else,” she says.

Indeed, it’s the place where Poilievre once sang Edith Piaf’s La Vie En Rose. Agostinho has a recording of the performance.

Behind the counter, Poilievre points to the machine where Agostinho once taught him how to make a cappuccino.

“I want to take a course to be a barista,” he says. He already has an espresso machine at home.

“I love espresso — it’s my favourite moment of the day when I have my first one.”

Looking ahead, Poilievre’s mother is more inclined to agree with campaign volunteer Koba about her son’s hopes for the future.

“I’m quite sure he’s got ambitions to go for the big job in another 10 years. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised about that.”

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